Jackie van Beek

The multi-talented Jackie van Beek emerged from Wellington’s 90s Victoria University/Bats Theatre scene. Since 2008 a run of dramatic shorts have won her notice as a director. The Inland Road — her first feature behind the camera — was selected for the Generation section of the 2017 Berlin Film Festival. The same year she began co-directing and acting in comedy movie The Breaker Upperers, with Madeleine Sami. The 2013 SPADA New Filmmaker of the Year is also a playwright and actor. She won a Moa award playing a wannabe vampire in hit What We Do in the Shadows; she was a clueless boss in TV's Funny Girls.

With its unsentimental, affecting performances, its delicate score rich in acoustic guitar and the natural beauty of its settings acting as an expressive canvas for emotional solitude, The Inland Road is a modest but quite satisfying debut.
Hollywood Reporter reviewer David Rooney on Jackie van Beek's movie The Inland Road, 16 February 2017